26 January 2025
My eldest child is in Nepal…
Scarcely has the ink dried on her final exam that my eldest is off on medical elective… in Kathmandu!
My lovely girl pops home for 24 hours before she goes and because I am a flexi work-from-homer these days, I am able to make the most of it. The washing machine whirrs on overdrive, I cook favourite meals, I help to find room in her rucksack for: 5 sets of scrub, a stethoscope and a stock pile of painkillers.
And then, somewhere amidst the busyness, I just stop and stand still for minute. Over thirty years ago, I was the girl frantically packing and re-packing my backpack for a 5 month trip to South East Asia. Excited, raring to go and full of adventure and I recall, moments before I set off , my mum appearing, bursting into tears and saying,
‘It’s just such so far away…’
And today that is me – oh how the tables have turned!
Four and a half thousand miles, fifteen plus hours by plane, a new culture and working in a hospital that will feel entirely different to her experience in the UK. Gosh; it is quite a challenge! And if she does need help – not even my flexi work from home status will be of much use for the next two months.
But, rolling the years back to the start of the 1990s, when I boarded that plane to Bangkok, I was on the verge of some of the best months of my life. An unbelievable time of joy, amazement, wonder – 5 months of feeling on cloud nine and more full of life and excitement than I could have hoped for.
So I keep my worries to myself. But as I drop her off at a friend’s house in Sheffield for the journey down to Gatwick I do give her a very big hug. And I also allow a little voice in my head to say,
Please keep her safe…
Smashing Single Parenthood 